How bad is workplace violence?

The study conducted as part of my MSc in Security and Risk Management (Appointments, SMT, February 2004, p52) aimed to address the issue of whether workplace violence in the manned security industry is a significant problem, and discover just how much it affects the lives and output of people employed in the sector. Necessarily, this meant checking on previously available studies carried out in the UK, and comparing the results to what security officers are actually reporting from their places of employment.

Are there any pointers?
The first thing to note is the scarcity of specific research papers on the topic in comparison with other countries. Individual studies on the manned security sector are almost non-existent. In contrast, a vast number of very revealing studies have been carried out on workplace violence in a variety of other occupations, such as retail (Beck and Willis, 1995), the education sector (Gill and Hearnshaw, 1997), the Health Service (Health Services Advisory Committee, 1987) and even the London Underground (Chappell and Di Martino, 2000).

Feedback from security officers was gained for this unique study, then, by carrying out a quantitative survey of a number of sites in both London and Bristol which were further supported by a series of semi-standardised qualitative interviews with another group of security officers in the same locations.

The study necessarily focused on a number of tasks, including patrols, access control and reception duties and incident response in a variety of different locations. It was also focused within one security company – The Corps – by way of further defining the results.

In the first instance, individual questionnaires were sent out to 72 officers working across four sites, including town council office buildings in London, an estate of buildings for a major property management company (again in London), and both a retail park and a mobile phone company's offices (both in Bristol). For the interviews, a new site was added (a shopping arcade in Bristol). Aside from the obvious potential risks, this also brought into play comments of lone workers.

Abuse... and non-reporting
The results – some of which are particularly important for future research and action – make for interesting reading. Two of note concern the levels of verbal abuse to which security officers are subjected during the course of their duties, and also the levels of non-reporting that can hamper attempts to combat the incidents of workplace violence that occur in the manned security industry.

Some 27% of those officers surveyed have suffered from workplace-related violence, a figure shown to be in line with British Crime Surveys carried out on the general area of protective services and the security industry at the tail end of the 1990s. This figure was much greater in terms of the individual interviews, though, with seven out of eight (87.5%) of officers questioned having been subjected to violence. All of those officers had suffered verbal abuse, whereas only 19% of respondents to the survey had been subjected to this.

Clearly, verbal abuse against officers is rife. It seems to be accepted as a downside of the job, and so there's a significant amount of non-reporting. When questioned in the interviews, officers made mention of regular verbal abuse being thrown at them, to the extent that they "ignored it and didn't let it get to them".

If the problem of workplace violence – be it physical or verbal – isn’t recognised and dealt with by introducing better methods to protect officers then levels of stress-related absences may rise quite dramatically in the years ahead

Repeat victimisation on certain sites by particular types of visitors or contractors came out in the interviews that again was passed off as a common problem to be accepted and dealt with because of the support from the company and client(s). A major positive to emerge from this study centred on the feeling among officers that they're properly supported by the client(s), their employer and the police in trying to tackle the problem.

Is racism a problem?
A further surprising – but no less pleasing – result is that despite only targeting a small number of officers employed by The Corps, there were no incidents of racial abuse highlighted by either research method (24 non-white personnel having taken part).

That said, we're not trying to suggest that this form of abuse doesn't take place. While not only raising the point that levels of racial harassment against security officers could well be low, it also reinforces the opinion that workplace violence against security officers is perpetrated because of the job they're doing, and not necessarily due to their ethnic background, age or gender.

Nevertheless, the question remains as to how much abuse they should be putting up with in the first place. The 19% of officers who noted down acts of verbal abuse in their questionnaires were those who weren't prepared to take such abuse "in their stride". All security officers will harbour different tolerance levels in terms of what they're prepared to put up with. There was an element of non-reporting in the questionnaires, so the 'final' figures would be lower than the actual levels of verbal abuse.

Common time off seemed to mirror previous studies, amounting to at least three days post each incident. However, when averaged out through the respondents it was actually less than one day per security officer.

In terms of physical abuse, the surveys only reported a 9% incident rate (which was much lower than in other industries). However, because of the nature of the work involved, it became quite clear that when incidents of physical abuse do take place they – no matter how few in number – they may be very serious indeed. The survey revealed attacks by more than one person on individual officers, officers having been hit with fire extinguishers, punched, kicked and scolded with hot liquids.

It was surprising to find that more time had not been taken off work due to injuries sustained, but this is testament to the officers' excellent attitude in the face of worsening 'threat levels' during the past decade.